I'm trying to launch a product for developers. The product involves storing private data on my cloud/servers. Even the big cloud providers like Google cloud, Azure and AWS have trust issues, but I guess people trust them because so many others are already using them. So besides fake it (user count) until you make it, what other means could I take to make users (other developers) to trust my software.
I think this is the main issue with "cloud" computing and if we solve this it will open up market share for smaller companies to take from the big players.
Also there is the economy of scale, that especially in software it costs almost nothing to serve one more user when everything is automated. So must all software companies become big companies!?
For normal users (non developers) it's a bit easier and you can still break into new markets, but we're heading in the same direction there too, users flock around the biggest companies and their products.
Part of the problem isn’t so much trust but covering my behind. If I support/propose buying some new entrant, I can be blamed for choosing them. If I choose the industry standard option, everyone else also did that so how could I be at fault?
So the big incumbents are automatically better for my purposes as that is an easier decison to defend.
“Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” remains true today.